Slashdot Mirror
Google's Chrome OS To Launch In Fall
Kidfork writes "On Wednesday Google's vice president of product management said that this fall Google will launch Chrome OS to compete with Microsoft Windows. More than 70 million users already use the Chrome Browser, and Google expects at least 1 million users of the OS by day one of release."
We can only guess what information it will suck up and report back to Google.
They'll probably response by not trying to use it to play games.
> Google will launch Chrome OS to compete with Microsoft Windows.
Sorry, where does it say that they are aiming to compete with Windows, because it doesn't mention windows in TFA. They've never claimed to try and do that - they're targetting a completely different market. Chome OS is just a browser than boot up with no host operating system. Windows IS an entire operating system.
Wasn't it already said that it's illegal to integrate your browser into your operating system?
No, integrating a web browser into an operating system is completely legal. It is illegal, however, to attempt to use an effective monopoly in the desktop operating systems market to gain an effective monopoly in the web browser market.
Google has approximately no market share in the desktop OS market, so this is not an issue. They may have an effective monopoly in the search engine market (debatable), but they are not requiring Chrome or ChromeOS for their search engine so this is also not an issue.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Probably by asking "But will it run Crysis?"
I'm sure farmville and mafiawars will get higher framerates on these systems and have a totally unfair advantage
Fixed that for you.
Thank you, slave.
Here be signatures
if they want my windows, they're going to have to pry it out of my warm, living, delicately moisturized hands
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
And why is it impossible to solve the privacy issues in the long run? The way I look at it, if the economic benefits of the "cloud" model are good enough, it's only a matter of time until the other issues are solved over time. Consider checks as an example of this idea. Initially, they seem retarded (I'm going to give you this little piece of paper which is a promise from me to you that my bank will give you this amount of gold if you go there to call on it). Stupid. However, when you consider that the same innovation (banks and checks) allowed you to draw on your account from anywhere that bank had a branch, and enabled you to perform large transactions without having to carry all of your gold with you all of the time, it is obvious that the transactions enabled by the innovation are valuable enough on average to outweigh the risks inherent in the system. Even today there is a tremendous amount of check fraud, but by god, we use them like there is no tomorrow. Why? because without them (and their equivalent financial instruments) our modern society could not exist.
The new "store everything somewhere else and access it from anywhere" model has very similar risks, but also very similar benefits. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than the old model in many ways and will, over time, enable valuable use cases that we have not even imagined yet.
so, returning to my original question, why can't we solve these concerns in the long run? Because if it's not impossible, it is simply inevitable.
What I want is the ability to save my browser session back to google somehow "in the cloud" or whatever so that I can close my browser on one computer, start up a generic copy of chrome somewhere else, login, and get my entire session restored. If that happened the whole system would just become much more useful, particularly if you are in a landscape littered with what are effectively thin terminals. Imagine that kind of functionality with a mobile device like the iPad or something (ignoring all of the limitations that exist today). Close out on my desktop, transfer to my portable device, go to meetings and w/e without missing a beat or having to take the time to open things on one device that I was already interacting with on another.
Do you need to use Chrome to use Google - no
Do you need to use ChromeOS to use Chrome - no
Do you need to use Google if you use Chrome and ChromeOS ... probably not
Do Google have a large market share in browsers - No
Do Google have a large market share in OS's - No
No monopoly behaviour here ....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Piracy is the future, get over it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There are some choice quotes in the article's source article over at Reuters.
Here's one of my favorites, from Sundar Pichai:
Wow, lots of revisionist history here. It turns out that Microsoft wasn't/isn't bundling web browsers with Windows since Windows 98. I mean, they must not have been, because they weren't one of the "few... operating systems for which there are already millions of applications that work" such as "Gmail" and "Facebook."
Seriously, did he think no one would notice that he was saying that Chrome OS is one of the few operating systems that can run web applications?
I don't need a B.S. in Lieology to detect the problem with that logic!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Piracy leaves no future for outdated, dinosaur business models. Accept it.
Fixed that for you. And I've long accepted and praised it.